I do like a nice lump of rock
Be it in its natural habitat, like this rock at the edge of a quarry, that has simply been built in to the wall, why bother shifting it, just build round it.
or something that has been simply crafted, like this gate post, to serve its purpose for generation after generation.
I am not the alone; in a love of stone, the difference being that
I think it is something about the ‘built to last’ ethos that I like, that along with how the stone used for walling and building, reflects the geology beneath our feet, and how the colour of the stone changes, just ever so slightly and subtlety; the soft pink stone in the shippon (or cow byre) above, is unique to the quarry over the hill from here (now long since disused) and is the same stone that our house is built from. Old houses = local stone and building materials.
There is a very healthy trade in this stone amongst our neighbours, should any, by chance become available, it is snapped up with a view to the building of new extensions that blend with the original property.
Old buildings tell a story, of changing needs and use’s; door’s built up, windows or even another storey added, but when things start to shift it can be expensive and difficult to repair and as some of you already know, extremely tedious.
The stones above are not our responsibility; thank goodness, however a few years ago we had to undertake a major building project with our barn; we knew when we bought the place that, the barn was dodgy, the previous owners had put a large opening in the gable end, so as to use the building as a garage, they neither took advice or used their noggins, because the whole of the two story wall shifted, the top of the gable wall was leaning out by over a foot it was continuing to move; the stone slate roof had to come off, the colossal weight was simply pushing the gable wall off, down the hill (Mr UHDD ever the engineer, calculated the weight of the stone slates was equivalent to parking Landrover’s over the entire area of the roof.)
Sadly we have not been in a position to replace the stone slates (one day, it’s a very expensive option) so we have ‘temporarily ‘ used a man made corrugated roofing material, one day, one day but at least the gable wall is now stable.
We were really pleased when some turned up on our doorstep selling this aerial photograph (I suppose Google maps have knocked this market on the head) of our house, taken whilst the work was ongoing, the seller said ‘I suppose you won’t be very interested, in this shot, what with the building work’ I had to agree, and offer him a fiver to take the print off his hands, secretly I was delighted to get an aerial photo of the work, our huge barn looking like a house of cards.
